We claim, however, that the moral ideas of the reason are in all men _identical_; that they exist and operate, even though unconsciously, in all minds, determining their moral judgments; and that _when the same relations of personality are clearly before the mind the moral judgments of men are uniform_. In spite of all the topical moralities to which factitious circumstances may have given birth, there is unquestionably _a universal and immutable morality_. In every nation under heaven, veracity, justice, and beneficence are separated by a clear, unmistakable line from falsehood, injustice, and cruelty; nor can all the casuistry and sophistry in the universe transpose or confound them. Custom, prescription, conventions of human opinion, factitious circumstances, can never blur over and obliterate these lines which separate right and wrong. Beneath all these apparent differences, the conscience will make her voice heard in the depth of the soul, in the common sentiments of mankind, and in the statutes of universal jurisprudence. The great ideas of justice and right were prominent and well defined among the nations of antiquity. "Nemesis and Themis were not only their abstractions and deities--they were embodied in their systems of jurisprudence. Law secured property and sanctified life. Law guarded every relation and ordered every act. Law was the theme of their philosophy and the burden of their song. We are not unacquainted with the jealousies and disputes of their schools of philosophy. They placed the good of man and the reason of morality in the most incongruous things, but _they never differed concerning the conduct which was right_. Epicurus and Zeno knew no divergence here."[516] Indeed, they asserted the immutability of moral law for all times and places-- "The unwritten laws of God that know not change; They are not of to-day nor yesterday, But live for ever."[517]